11-year old uses birthday money to buy a goat for family in Africa

An 11-year-old boy saw an opportunity to give to others in a Christmas catalog, and decided to act on it.

Kyler Cox spent his birthday money to buy a goat for a family in Africa. Cox was looking through an Operation Mobilization Christmas catalog, when he saw he could help a family out overseas for just $56.

Cox wrote a letter to Operation Mobilization, an Atlanta-based non-profit ministry organization, asking for help in his endeavor to buy the goat.

The organization showed him a photo of a child who received a goat through the program that would be similar to his donation. In addition, Cox lives in Austin, Texas, but was able to SKYPE call a teacher from Africa involved in the project.

The president of Operation Mobilization wrote a letter back to Cox to thank him for his donation.

"You are a special young man with a precious heart, and we here at OM are proud of you and feel blessed to know you," part of the letter said. "I am sure your parents and grandparents are proud of you too, and we know that God is smiling as He looks upon the kindness in your heart."

Info on the Goat Project

The goat program helps most in villages around Malawi in southeast Africa, where the needs are great. In these areas as many as 85% of the children are orphaned. Extended family struggle to meet the needs of their own families as well as the needs of the orphans. Many of them do not attend school. Operation Mobilization started a school for these children in 2013 where they receive a Christian education and two nutritious meals each day. In order to help the guardians take care of these children OM works to provide a goat to each family represented in the school. The goats produce milk and meat that is nutritious and healthy, manure for fertilizing crops, and they reproduce goats to help populate the goat ministry.